a direct image captured with the Keck II telescope of AF Lep b, an extrasolar planet that has a mass and orbit similar to Jupiter. Credit: University of Texas at Austin/W. M. Keck Observatory
The study, led by astronomy college student Kyle Franson at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), is released in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
” When we processed the observations utilizing the Keck II telescope in real time to carefully remove the glare of the star, the world instantly popped out and became progressively evident the longer we observed,” said Franson.
The direct images Fransons group recorded exposed that AF Lep b has to do with three times the mass of Jupiter and orbits AF Leporis, a young Sun-like star about 87.5 light-years away. They took a series of deep pictures of the world starting in December 2021; 2 other teams also caught pictures of the very same planet ever since.
” This is the very first time this approach has actually been used to find a giant world orbiting a young analog of the Sun,” stated Brendan Bowler, an assistant teacher of astronomy at UT Austin and senior author on the research study. “This unlocks to utilizing this technique as a brand-new tool for exoplanet discovery.”
The motion of the extrasolar world AF Lep b (white area at about 10 oclock) around its host star (center) can be seen in these two images taken in Dec. 2021 and Feb. 2023. Images were collected utilizing the W. M. Keck Observatorys 10-meter telescope in Hawaiʻi.
In spite of having a much smaller mass than its host star, an orbiting world causes a stars position to wobble slightly around the center of gravity of the planetary system. Astrometry uses this shift in a stars position on the sky relative to other stars to presume the presence of orbiting worlds. Franson and Bowler recognized the star AF Leporis as one that might harbor a world, offered the way it had actually moved during 25 years of observations from the Hipparcos and Gaia satellites.
To straight image the world, the UT Austin group used Keck Observatorys adaptive optics system, which remedies for fluctuations brought on by turbulence in Earths environment, coupled with the Keck II Telescopes Near-Infrared Camera 2 (NIRC2) Vector Vortex Coronagraph, which suppresses light from the host star so the world could be seen more plainly. AF Lep b has to do with 10,000 times fainter than its host star and lies about 8 times the Earth-Sun distance.
This chart reveals the masses and orbital ranges of all the extrasolar worlds that have been straight imaged so far. Astronomers have verified the masses of five (marked with stars) and estimated the rest (dots). The recently imaged planet, AF Lep b (yellow star), has a mass and orbit that make it among the most Jupiter-like extrasolar planets imaged up until now. Credit: Brendan Bowler, University of Texas at Austin
” Imaging planets is challenging,” Franson said. “We only have about 15 examples, and we think this brand-new dynamically informed approach enabled by the Keck II telescope and NIRC2 adaptive optics imaging will be far more efficient compared to blind surveys which have been performed for the previous 20 years.”
The 2 most typical ways of finding extrasolar worlds involve observing small, periodic dimming of the starlight if a planet takes place to frequently pass in front of the star– like a moth spiraling around a patio light– and determining minute modifications in the frequencies of starlight that result from the world tugging the star backward and forward along the instructions to Earth. Both methods tend to work best with big worlds orbiting close to their host stars, and both techniques are indirect: we do not see the world, we just see how it influences the star.
The approach of combining direct imaging with astrometry could help astronomers find extrasolar worlds that were hard to discover before with other methods due to the fact that they were too far from their host star, were too low mass, or didnt have orbits that were edge-on as seen from Earth. Another advantage of this method is that it permits astronomers to directly measure a worlds mass, which is hard with other techniques at wide orbital distances.
Bowler said the group plans to continue studying AF Lep b.
” This will be an outstanding target to further characterize with the James Webb Space Telescope and the next generation of large ground-based telescopes like the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope,” Bowler said. “Were already planning more delicate follow-up efforts at longer wavelengths to study the physical homes and atmospheric chemistry of this world.”
Referral: “Astrometric Accelerations as Dynamical Beacons: A Giant Planet Imaged inside the Debris Disk of the Young Star AF Lep” by Kyle Franson, Brendan P. Bowler, Yifan Zhou, Tim D. Pearce, Daniella C. Bardalez Gagliuffi, Lauren I. Biddle, Timothy D. Brandt, Justin R. Crepp, Trent J. Dupuy, Jacqueline Faherty, Rebecca Jensen-Clem, Marvin Morgan, Aniket Sanghi, Christopher A. Theissen, Quang H. Tran and Trevor N. Wolf, 22 June 2023, Astrophysical Journal Letters.DOI: 10.3847/ 2041-8213/ acd6f6.
NASA Keck time is administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute. Data provided herein were acquired at the W. M. Keck Observatory from telescope time assigned to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through the companys scientific collaboration with the California Institute of Technology and the University of California.
The motion of the extrasolar world AF Lep b (white area at about 10 oclock) around its host star (center) can be seen in these two images taken in Dec. 2021 and Feb. 2023. Regardless of having a much smaller mass than its host star, an orbiting planet triggers a stars position to wobble a little around the center of mass of the planetary system. Astrometry uses this shift in a stars position on the sky relative to other stars to infer the presence of orbiting planets. Franson and Bowler determined the star AF Leporis as one that may harbor a world, given the way it had actually moved during 25 years of observations from the Hipparcos and Gaia satellites.
The newly imaged planet, AF Lep b (yellow star), has a mass and orbit that make it one of the most Jupiter-like extrasolar worlds imaged so far.
By W. M. Keck Observatory
July 3, 2023
Utilizing the W. M. Keck Observatory, a group of astronomers led by Kyle Franson at the University of Texas at Austin has actually recorded direct pictures of among the lowest-mass worlds, named AF Lep b. This discovery, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, marks the very first use of the astrometry method in discovering a huge world orbiting a young Sun-like star.
Researchers have actually utilized a method called astrometry to straight image among the lowest-mass planets, AF Lep b, orbiting a young Sun-like star. This method could reinvent the way we find extrasolar worlds, specifically those that are challenging to identify due to their orientation, mass, or distance relative to Earth.
Astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island have found one of the lowest-mass worlds whose images have been directly recorded. Not only were they able to measure its mass, however they were also able to identify that its orbit is comparable to the giant worlds in our own solar system.
The world, called AF Lep b, is amongst the very first ever found using a technique called astrometry; this method measures the subtle movements of a host star over many years to assist astronomers identify whether hard-to-see orbiting companions, including planets, are gravitationally yanking at it.
